


Dancing On His Feet

by AgentOfShip



Series: AgentOfShip does Marvel Fluff Bingo 2019 [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Champagne, Dancing, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Sci-Ops Era (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Wedding, accidental fake dating, adorable dad Fitz, dancing on his feet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 03:05:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19039891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentOfShip/pseuds/AgentOfShip
Summary: Jemma asks Fitz to be her date at her cousin's wedding and he takes his role much more seriously than Jemma had anticipated. Years later, someone wants to know what happened that day.Written for Marvel Fluff Bingo for the square "dancing on his feet" which also seemed like a fitting title.Beta'd by the wonderful @LibbyWeasley





	Dancing On His Feet

"So how did you two finally fall in love?"

"Oh that's a lovely story, Mrs..." Fitz replied, hesitating a moment before adding "… Simmons." Jemma had such a huge family, it was hard to keep track of which aunt or cousin was from which side of the family and whose name they wore, but the sweet older woman smiled as she shook her head and Fitz relaxed a little. 

"Call me Judy, dear, you're part of the family now. Even more so if Jemma catches the bouquet tonight," she said, winking as she nodded towards the happy couple dancing a few feet away. 

Jemma really wasn't kidding when she said her family was obsessed with everyone getting married once they were over twenty. 

"Alright then Judy," he said, affecting his most charming smile before going back to the relatively safer topic of how they'd fallen in love. "The thing is, Jemma was ahead of me this time. And you know how impatient she can be for things to go her way so, of course, she had to do something to make me realize I felt the same."

"Awww."

"So she wrote a poem for me."

"Really?"

Judy's eyes widened and Fitz did his best to keep a straight face.

"Yeah, it's hard to believe when you know her, but she's actually the romantic one."

"Oh wow. I guess love does change you. And what did it say?"

"Oh... hum, it was beautiful really. It went something like this:  
Your blue eyes are a deep ocean I wish could drown in.  
Then I'd be forever inside you and your heart would be my home."

God, that was bad. And kind of gross when you really thought about it. 

"Oh that's lovely! But isn't there more?" she asked, her face apparently stuck on that smile people had on when kids showed them a drawing and they were trying to know if it was a clown or a llama. Fitz almost felt bad for what came next but it was just too good to stop now. And that should teach Jemma for leaving him alone for so long.

"Ah, of course but I don't think I can tell you..."

"Oh, why is that?"

"See, it's getting a little hum... naughty. She really does love _everything_ about me. There's a good deal about my lovely backside and then there this part about… No I can't tell you, It's just too—"

"Leo! Come dance with me, my sweet cinnamon roll!"

Fitz didn't know if he should be relieved or disappointed by the interruption as he turned around to flash Jemma his brightest smile.

"Oh, but I was in the middle of telling your aunt how we fell in love, me duck, I cannot possibly—"

"Oh no, that's alright dear, you'll finish another time. Go have fun," she said, looking at the same time fond and quite embarrassed. 

Fitz hid his grin behind his glass as he finished the last of his champagne, then stood up and offered Jemma his arm.

She wound her arms around his neck the moment they were on the dance floor. "Fitz, you really have to stop doing th—"

"Oh my god!" he cried out as he put his hands on her waist. "How can you be so cold even through your dress?"

"Oh, that's alright, I— Oh… okay then," she cut herself off when he wound his arms tightly around her and pulled her into his embrace, gently rubbing her back to try and infuse some warmth into her before she turned into an icicle. Silly Jemma, she should have asked for a hug long ago. He was, after all, her little human radiator. Her words, not his.

"I'm sorry, what were you saying before?" 

"You should stop this."

"Oh sorry." He pulled back slightly, feeling his cheeks grow hot. "I didn't mean to—"

"No! Not this," she cut him off, pulling him back into the hug. "This is nice and warm and hu… quite adorable."

It was indeed very nice and even though it was the most natural thing in the world for him, he supposed it was kind of sweet. And actually, a lot of eyes were on them, all soft and gooey. Well, Jemma was indeed exceptionally pretty tonight and he, well he was there and he was new so they probably made a nice enough couple for people to watch them. 

"No, what I meant to say is you have to stop telling a different story to every member of my family. When I asked you to come with me, it was just so I wouldn't have to hear the tone of pity in my mom's voice when I said I was coming alone. I didn't even ask you to pretend to be my boyfriend!" 

"I know! But your grandma just assumed and I couldn't disappoint the poor old lady, could I?" 

She pulled back from the hug slightly to look at him with an amused smile. "You're liking this a lot, aren't you?" 

"Well, it's nice to feel like a part of this huge family, I could always count mine on the fingers of one hand. And there are worse things than people thinking I'm _your_ boyfriend too, you know." 

There were actually very few things better than that. He'd felt like the luckiest boy in the world when she befriended him at the Academy and had never stopped feeling that way since. And to think that all these people had no trouble believing that he'd been upgraded to boyfriend was simply the most incredible and strangely exciting thing in the world. 

"Well, that's… sweet of you to say," she replied, her cheeks pinking slightly. "But they would have accepted you just the same if you were my best friend."

"You think so?"

"Yes. But they really do love you and I have to admit it's kind of nice being your girlfriend for the evening." She moved closer again, her cheek grazing his. "And I think cousin Cynthia is a little mad at me because I stole her thunder by bringing you today," she whispered against his ear. 

Fitz's lips pulled into a wide grin even as he felt shivers run down his spine as her lips grazed his skin when she spoke. He couldn't believe he would steal anyone's thunder and thought it had more to do with Jemma being the brightest, prettiest girl in this room, or well in every room she was in, but he took the compliment anyway. 

"Just, maybe, no new stories, okay?"

"But they're amazing!"

She pulled back once more.

"Really? Even the one about saving me from a crate of rotting cabbages that was about to fall on my head?"

"Especially that one!" he replied, grinning. "And it's true, too!" 

She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion.

"Well, almost. Remember when Milton wanted to get back with you and I told him we were a couple so he wouldn't ask you out on Valentine's Day?" 

"Oh right. You do love pretending we're together, don't you?" 

"Only to rescue you from boring dates or annoying questions, sweetheart," he replied, grinning even as he could feel his cheeks grow hot. 

She rolled her eyes and started swaying to the slow music playing in the background, Fitz following her steps. 

"Fitz?"

"Yeah."

"Please no more new stories?" 

"Fine," he replied, pouting and she chuckled as she kissed his cheek and pulled him back into the hug as they kept dancing.

"God! My feet are killing me," she let out after a few minutes, her voice muffled with her face all smushed against his shoulder.

"Want to sit?"

"No, it's nice here with you."

"Take your shoes off then."

"No, it's too late, the ground's all gross now and someone broke a glass earlier." 

Fitz rolled his eyes and pulled back from the hug. "Well come on then." 

He took her hand and led her out of the dance floor towards their table. 

"But Fitz, I want to dance!"

"Trust me, yeah?" he said, as he gently pushed her to sit on a chair and she nodded as she looked up at him with a curious but amused expression.

He sat next to her and reached for her leg, putting it on his lap to take her shoe off, thinking it safer to do it that way rather than kneeling in front of her. He didn't want her family to get too many ideas. He quickly took off the strap around her ankle and freed her foot of what would have probably been considered a torture device in another time, before reaching for her other leg and doing the same. Her legs and feet were just as freezing as the rest of her body so he wrapped his hands around her ankles like he always ended up doing when she snuck her feet under his thigh while they were watching a movie together. (Why she still kept walking around the apartment barefoot, he'd never understand) 

A contented smile spread across her face as he moved down to warm her feet as well. 

"Fitz, this is very nice but…" She trailed off, her eyes fluttering closed for a second as he ran his thumbs from her heels to her toes to try and release some of the tension her evil shoes had made her endure. "But we're not… mmh… dancing anymore."

"I know, I'm just getting a head start on what I'll end up doing tonight anyway," he replied, grinning as he gave the arch of her feet one last hard rub before letting go. 

Ignoring her adorable pout —she was too good at getting him to massage her feet for hours— he stood up and offered his hand. She looked up at him still confused. 

"Get on my feet!"

"What? No, I'm not a child, I can't—"

"So what?"

"I'm too heavy."

"Oh please, Jemma. Don't be ridiculous."

She bit her lip but her eyes were betraying her.

"Come on, I know you want to. Just give it a try..."

"Alright," she said, as she took his hand then put both feet on his before letting him pull her up. Her momentum almost made them fall and it took a moment and a lot of laughing and cursing for them to restore their balance without Jemma ever having to put her feet on the ground. But finally, with her arms around his neck and him holding her close so she wouldn't fall backwards again, they started, not quite dancing, but swaying, much too slowly considering what kind of music was playing, from side to side. 

"This is so silly!" she said, her voice still full of laughter. 

"Is it really?" he asked, looking straight into her eyes as their position brought them almost exactly to the same height. "And I thought I was being a gentleman."

"No, the gentlemanly thing would be to lay your jacket on the ground for me to walk on it."

He raised his eyebrows in amusement and she smiled, the laughter slowly being replaced with something softer, more tender, as they kept moving together in this gentle embrace that was more a hug than anything else.

" Oh, is that so?"

"Yes. But I chose this jacket for you," she replied, patting his chest affectionately. "It looks too good to be ruined by stepping on it. And I like silly better anyway," she added, her voice lowered to barely more than a whisper with their faces so close to each other.

A strand of hair had escaped her bun and was partially hiding her face so Fitz reached for it and gently put it back behind her ear. Her eyes closed reflexively for a second and when she opened them again, they seemed to sparkle. In fact, all of her seemed to radiate light tonight. Even her lips reflected the soft, changing lights of the dance floor. She took a sharp intake of breath and Fitz's eyes shot up only to find her looking at his lips as well. 

Oh.

She looked back up and he finally met her eyes, finding in them the same tenderness and surprise his must be expressing at this moment. On any other day, he would probably have broken the moment with a terrible joke, but the skin of her cheek was so soft under his hand and he just couldn't look away. He'd always been drawn to her, from the moment they first met, but now her attraction had reached a level he just couldn't escape anymore.

They were so close anyway that it took only the smallest movement for their lips to touch. And then they were kissing. Fitz almost expected an electric shock but her lips were in fact so warm and soft that he sighed softly and melted into the kiss. They stopped swaying as her arms tightened around his neck and the kiss grew in intensity. As with everything they did together, the feeling of absolute rightness was overwhelming. Their lips were dancing over each other, parting and getting back together like a perfectly well rehearsed choreography. She let out a small noise in the back of her throat when his fingers slid from her face to her neck and into her hair, and Fitz felt a rush of heat all the way from his lips down to his toes. He grazed her lip with his tongue and she gladly parted her lips to deepen the kiss. He held her as close as he could, wishing they could remain in this perfect embrace forever without ever having to face the outside world again, but the kiss still ended after a moment and their foreheads touched instead of their lips. 

"Fitz, what was this?" she asked, her voice still breathless and low as if not to break the spell.

"Making our pretend relationship more believable to your family?"

She moved back and looked at him with raised eyebrows that seemed to mean that she knew just as well as he did that there was nothing fake in that kiss.

"You being unfairly pretty today and smelling really nice?" he proposed and he could see she was biting her lip not to smile at the compliment.

"That cake was really delicious and you had chocolate on your lips?"

"Fitz, you—"

"The champagne getting to our heads then?" he cut her off and she gently rolled her eyes this time.

"The fact that I seem to be falling in love with you?"

Her smile threatened to split her face in two and Fitz felt warm all over despite her icy fingers still playing with the little hair at the nape of his neck.

"That's a lot of possibilities."

"Yes."

"So which one is it?"

"Is "all of the above" an acceptable answer?"

"It's very acceptable."

"So now w—"

"Now make your stories extra believable and kiss me again," she spoke against his lips and kissed him again before he could say anything.

Getting together while pretending to be together. That was the one story he hadn't thought of. It was all so… cliché. Which would have bothered him if he wasn't too busy balancing Jemma on his feet while she kissed him like there was no one in the room but them.

-0-0-0-

"Mommy! Daddy's being silly!"

Jemma smiled at the adorable, although admittedly rather shrill voice of the second love of her life coming from downstairs. She saved her document and closed her laptop, the prospect of witnessing whatever shenanigans those two were up to much more tempting than the report she was typing for Director Mackenzie. 

She entered the living room and found her husband wearing that grin she knew so well and that most likely confirmed her daughter's accusation. 

"But I thought we loved it when daddy was being silly," Jemma said, coming to sit beside her daughter on the couch as she beamed at Fitz, turning his own grin into a dopey smile.

"I do, but this time I want the real story!"

"And how do you know it's not?" Jemma asked with mock innocence. 

The little girl turned her big blue eyes to her mother and huffed, actually huffed, before answering with a defiant tone.

"Because I asked how he fell in love with you and he said it was when you made your victory dance yesterday in the lab."

God, at five years old, Rosie already had the confidence it had taken Jemma decades to build. 

"Ah!" Fitz cried out victoriously. "But you didn't ask when I fell in love with mommy _for the first time_. I fall in love with mommy everyday!"

The little girl rolled her eyes but Jemma's heart turned to mush the same way it had the first time he'd told her he loved her. She joined her husband sitting on the ground and pulled him into a gentle embrace.

"What did I say about not setting up our daughter for unrealistic romantic expectations?" she whispered in his ear.

He pulled back slightly to look into her eyes. 

"But it's all true," he protested.

"I know, but there's only one of you, Fitz. If she's ever interested in love, she shouldn't expect everyone to be as romantic as her father."

She kissed his cheek and sat next to Fitz, facing their impatient daughter.

"Now tell me how you fell in love with mommy _for the first time_."

"Well, we were sixteen and it was our first class together at the Academy. The prof said something about—"

"Not that one Fitz!"

"But that's when I first fell in love with you, Jemma!"

"But you didn't realize it until the wedding. Tell her about the wedding."

"You want to tell the story yourself?" Fitz asked, pouting, and Jemma rolled her eyes fondly before looping her arm in his to get closer.

"She's too young to talk about dielectric polarization. Tell her about the wedding, it's a nice story."

"Because it's romantic," he said, grinning.

"Because that's the day we both realized it. Together." 

Fitz's face softened at her words. For years, he’d insisted that he was ahead of her this time, but with everything that had happened since, they’d agreed to see it as the day that had changed everything for them both. He cupped her cheek with his hand and pulled her into a kiss. Jemma would have gotten lost in the feeling of his warm, soft lips and the way it never failed to send a zing down her spine even after more than ten years, if it wasn't for the big sigh Rosie let out. They broke the kiss, beaming at each other, before Fitz turned to their daughter.

"Alright, so we were best friends then and sharing an apartment in Boston, and mommy was invited to her cousin's wedding. She didn't want to go alone because she was afraid she'd be bored without daddy." 

Jemma rolled her eyes discreetly but she had to admit that it was probably best to say it like that. She'd protect their daughter from family pressure and society's obsession with finding a partner before a certain age for as long as she could. 

"So we went together and had a lot of fun. We drank champagne and ate cake and danced a lot. But then, mommy's feet started to hurt and she was sad because she still wanted to dance but she didn't want her feet to get dirty if she took her shoes off. So since daddy is a genius," Fitz continued, flashing Jemma a ridiculous grin before continuing. "He had a genius idea. I took mommy's shoes off and told her to put her feet on mine so that we could keep dancing together. And it was so nice that I realized there was nothing better than having mommy in my arms and I wanted her to stay there for the rest of our lives. And that's how I knew I was in love with her."

The sassy expression that seemed to be their daughter's default mood these days had been replaced by one of wonder that Jemma understood perfectly. Her husband had an undeniable talent for telling stories. Daisy always said it was because of the accent but Jemma knew it was more than that. Fitz told every story like he was in the middle of living it, even when he was reading Alice In Wonderland to their daughter for the tenth time in a week.

"I want that too!" she declared after a moment, standing up and taking her father's hand to try and lift him up from the ground.

"What? Fall in love with mommy?" he asked, teasing and making no effort to stand up. "But I thought you already loved her."

"Ugh, of course I love mommy. I meant the dancing."

Fitz turned to his wife and she smiled at him. 

"The way I remember it, I have to admit it _was_ terribly amusing," she said, knowing very well that Fitz didn't need the extra motivation anyway.

"Alright then, I suppose…" 

"I'll go put on some music," Jemma said as Fitz finally stood up and took his daughter's hands.

Rosie being as tiny as you'd expect from the five-year-old daughter of a tiny British woman and only slightly less tiny Scottish man, it wasn't quite as difficult to find their balance as it had been when Jemma was the one on his feet. Fitz started dancing to the music, turning around much faster and lifting his feet much higher than they both did back then and within two minutes, Rosie was laughing so hard she was crying, her happy squealing noises covering the music.

"Come on daddy, faster!" she kept asking and he was too happy to do it, his smile growing wider with every one of her delighted giggles. 

When he looked up at his wife, his face showed so much love and happiness she thought it might burst out of him any minute, and she fell in love with him all over again. 

Like she did every day.


End file.
